Every floor is a testimony to Africa’s great arts, giving accolade to the African Heritage House as the most photographed house in the world.

Published: Nation newspaper Saturday magazine 11 May 2024

Above: The African Heritage House. Credit Maya Mangat

It’s nostalgic being back at the African Heritage House, one of the world’s most unique houses inspired by all that is African – from her architecture to the arts, from her textiles to the cuisine.

I remember the first time driving up there in early 2006 and wondering if we had the correct address amidst the urban sprawl of Mlolongo. I see the same expression on my guests till we arrive at the house, the façade inspired by the mud mosques of Timbuktu and Djenne in Mali.

It was the first time I had seen anything like that. The mystical Timbuktu came alive, which was the centre of Islamic studies in the 15^th and 16^th centuries and the home of the Koranic Sankore University founded in the 14^th century that was the intellectual and spiritual centre of Islam throughout Africa.  

The mud architecture had Alan Donovan so captivated that he said to himself that if he ever built a house, it would be a reflection of the mud mosques and filled with the beauty of Africa.

I can see the awe in the faces of my guests. For them, the typical tourists from the West, they were on an African safari – Africa represented in one facet only, her wildlife.

Then to see the grandeur of Africa in one house on the edge of Nairobi with that magical view of the grass plains of Nairobi National Park touching the horizon, giving relief to the eye from the cluttered urban mess of Nairobi city.

We begin with a stroll through the lawn to Donovan’s final resting place looking out at the knuckles of the Ngong Hills, a Maasai folklore of the giant who fell to the ground with his fist clenched.

A light rain falls; the sky is hung with blue-grey clouds. The lawn is unpretentious, with an acacia and commiphora tree watching over the great plains and the house, where Donovan held his last extravaganza of the African Heritage show in 2019 to launch the two-tome volume of the ‘African Twilight’ celebrating African ceremonies, half of which no longer happen.

Standing in the front veranda are the two images – one of the Great Mosque of Djenné that is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site and from which the house is modelled. The other which Donovan photographed from the house at the end of the 1980s is of a herd of wildebeest filling the grass plains of Nairobi National Park such that one would think it is of the famous annual wildebeest migration of the Serengeti-Maasai Mara. The Nairobi National Park-Athi-Kapiti plains boasted the second largest wildebeest migration until the Nairobi-Mombasa highway was expanded and the fast traffic put an end to it.

Stepping inside though the wooden carved door that is reminiscent of the historical dhow trade between the east coast of Africa and the Indian subcontinent, everything that Donavan had collected from his travels across Africa from the 1960s are as he left them – the royal beads from the West African empires to the faience beads of the pharoahs that maybe Cleopatra wore; the textiles woven into silk by spiders and sisal. Every floor is a testimony to Africa’s great arts, giving accolade to the African Heritage House as the most photographed house in the world.

Finally it’s to a three-course lunch with the main course serving Afro-Swahili cuisine with coconut chicken, rice and traditional greens – it’s exquisite.

“I never appreciated art until I was exposed to it and the creativity of Africans by Donovan,” tells Tom Bernett Otieno, Donovan’s personal assistant for 21 years until his death in 2021. “He wanted to showcase African Heritage and culture to the world and so we continue hosting events, giving tours and meals to the guests of The African Heritage House.”

I recall Donovan pondering over the fate of the House that he wanted turned into The African Heritage Institute for posterity like he had set up the Murumbi Trust (Kenya’s second vice president in 1966 and one of the greatest African art collectors who co-founded the African Heritage with Donovan).

It’s on course. ‘We are working to complete Donovan’s  book ‘Black Beauty Through the Ages’, continues Otieno. “We want to make African Heritage bigger, better and a must visit destination.”

Spend a night or enjoy a day at the African Heritage House. Log on https://africanheritagehouse.info/